A winter tale

Minnesota author Peter Geye’s engaging second novel, following 2011’s Safe from the Sea, is also set in northern Minnesota, near the rugged shores of Lake Superior. The plot shifts back and forth in time from the late 1800s to the 1920s, focusing on Thea Eide—who is just 17 in 1895 when she leaves Norway for America to find a better life—and Odd, her son, born a year...